At Swim, Two Boys - Jamie O'Neill [51]
“Take it off.”
“Why would I?” The brother reached out and Doyler stepped back. “What has my badge to do with anything?”
“I will not have agitation in my band.”
“This is the parish of St. Joseph’s, Brother. Patron of the working man.”
Polycarp roasted him. “Little born-in-the-gutter.” He shot round to Jim. “Is this vulgarian to do with you?”
Jim felt the burning on his face. “He’s my friend, Brother. You know that already.”
“Pal o’ me heart,” said Doyler.
Jim saw himself weighed in the balance, then bitterly Brother Polycarp said, “And the half of your soul that is damned. Out of my sight, the both of ye.”
Jim let a low whistle in the road outside. “What was that about?”
“Don’t think I’m long for that band.”
“All because of a badge? That’s cracked.”
“Not any badge. The Red Hand of Liberty, emblem of the Citizen Army. Sword and shield of the working man, the red-flag socialists of Liberty Hall.”
“It’s not as if you’re a member.”
Doyler threw him a sneering look that told him not to quibble, then he swerved into the road to take a kick at a stone. Graceful approach, arms wide for balance; the stone scooned along raising puffs of dust. But his leg failed and he blundered after. “Shagging pins. Come on, Forty Foot.”
They skirted round the back of the chapel towards Newtown smith and the sea. Some young ones had fixed a rope to a lamppost and Doyler heeled over to take a swing of it.
“Get off, y’ ugly brute ya!”
“Honors easy,” said Doyler and swung the rope back.
When he came up with Jim, he clapped a hand on his shoulder and said, “She’s after calling me ugly.” The hand dropped. “Does he pray that way with you always?”
“We were at our devotion,” said Jim. “You oughtn’t have come in.”
“Curious all the same the way he has you in a hugger-mugger to pray.”
Even now Jim felt the remnants of his blush. On his neck and under his collar he felt a lurk of wet where the brother’s hand had passed.
Doyler kicked at a few stones and beat his palm on the coping of a wall. Thoughtfully he said, “Like a crow he looked from behind. An old rook with a sparrow under his wing.”
At the Forty Foot they lay side by side on the hard stone while the cold of the stone seeped through their jackets and chilled the sweat of their shoolering. Above them glimmered the Great Bear, an Céacht Cam in Gaelic, the Crooked Plough. “Plough and the Stars,” said Doyler, and Jim nodded for he knew that too now, the banner of the men of Liberty Hall, not red but blue. And if you leant your head far back you saw an Cúpla, the Twins, glistening just above the battery wall. Then Doyler said, “Brothers.”
And Jim knew he did not intend Castor and Pollux.
“Curious things are brothers. Neither hay nor grass. They wear the uniform, but they’re sergeants really, not officer class.”
Jim smiled. Was this scandalous talk? With scandalous talk you did not argue but, silently invoking the aid of Mary, politely took your leave. “Matter of vocations, I should think.”
“Vocations me arse.”
Yes, definitely scandalous.
“Sure who’d have a vocation to be a sergeant only? You want to be the officer in charge. Not as though old Polycarp’ll get promoted. Once a brother, die a brother.”
“You don’t have a vocation to be promoted. The vocation is to serve.”
“Damn all respect he gets for it. You saw the way the priest was down on him. All the vows and none of the glory.”
“I respect him.”
“Do you?”
“Everybody respects the brothers. Why wouldn’t they?”
Doyler leant up, looking to see some place to spit. “Well he don’t respect me. And if he don’t respect the working man, the Reverend Brother Polycarp can go spit.” And flit went the phlegm through the slit of his teeth.
Jim said nothing, just watched the circling sky. Unseemly talk and scandalous notions, the working man and brothers and priests. Politics was a puzzle at the best of times. Gordie had joined the Irish Volunteers that drilled to fight the Ulster Volunteers that drilled to fight Home Rule. But then the war came and they all joined up and were drilling together now to fight the Hun. All save